


they say truth was built on legends

by Moorishflower



Category: Fringe
Genre: Fringe - Freeform, Legends, M/M, Slash, Truth, Walter/William, m/m - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-05
Updated: 2009-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-02 12:31:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moorishflower/pseuds/Moorishflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's supposed to go like this: every legend is based on fact. Except no one ever sets out to become a <i>fact</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they say truth was built on legends

**they say truth was built on legends**

 

They don’t tell you that working for the government is a lot easier than you’d think it would be.

Actually, they don’t tell you a lot of things, but that’s one of the big ones. It’s one of the things you have to learn on your own, as opposed to one of the things you can use your partner’s excellent skills with machinery and computers to find out. And to be fair, William had wanted to know _too_, and it’s not like they’re going in and deliberately changing things around.

They just want to know what they’re doing.

Which, on most days, is a whole lot of nothing.

Their daily schedule looks something like this:

10:00 a.m. – Wake up. Try to find something to eat that hasn’t been put in a Petri dish yet.  
10:30 a.m. – Give up. Shake partner awake (sometimes it’s Walter and sometimes it’s William). Leave the lab to go and eat at McDonald’s on the government’s dime.  
12:00 p.m. – Return to lab. Spend three hours cooking up the best batch of LSD ever.  
3:30 p.m. – Commence tripping.  
4:26 p.m. – Try to lick William’s hand.  
6:00 p.m. – Go out for dinner, still high. Attempt to tip the server with buttons (Walter collects buttons and can normally be counted upon to have at least a dozen on his person).  
7:45 p.m. – Go back to the lab to await the crash.  
8:00 p.m. – Crash. Spend an hour talking about the latest project.  
9:00 p.m. – Fall asleep wrapped around each other on the floor.  
11:00 p.m. – Get woken by one of Walter’s nightmares. Return to individual beds.

They’re pretty okay with this schedule. What a lot of people don’t realize, what they’re too _stupid_ to realize, is that science is a lot like art. You can’t just stick a couple of geniuses in a lab and expect miracles; you have to give them time to think, and things to play with, and only the most vague of instructions. Just like painting or music, you cannot rush good science.

For instance, their current project began when a young man in army greens had delivered a letter detailing a process that Walter’s always found interesting, but has never had the equipment to do justice. Inter-species hybridization. _Chimaeras_.

William doesn’t know what a chimaera is.

“What the hell is a chimaera?”

And Walter gives him a withering look, the kind of look that’s reserved for good friends because they’re never going to punch your face in retaliation. They are both too smart and gentleman-like to resort to physical violence. Memories of being ‘the smart one’ in their respective schools still sting, even after all these years.

“A chimaera is a monster from Greek myth. It has the body of a lion, a snake for a tail, and a goat’s and dragon’s head besides.”

William snorts. “We’re not here to cook up _legends_, Wally.”

Which is true, but they’re not here to cook up amphetamines, either, and yet here they are, little blue tabs dissolving beneath their tongues, sitting on a pile of blankets that is beginning to feel _miles_ thick.

“No,” he says in response, as seriously as he can when his brain feels like it’s fizzing out his ears. “We’re here to _become_ legends.”

“Amen to that,” he hears, and William fumbles for one of the dozen bottles of water next to their soft nest. They have been hoarding them all day specifically for this purpose; it’s important to stay hydrated at the best of times, but especially so when you’re rolling.

They are two thirty-something guys, sitting on a pile of old blankets in the middle of a damp and dingy basement lab. They are high as kites and they have never felt more perfect.

Walter rolls onto his side, wriggles at the scratch of his shirt, but that is one of the rules: no matter what they drop, snort, lick, smoke or inject, their clothes must stay on. It’s easier to avoid embarrassing situations that way, even when they are alone and even though they have seen each other mostly nude more times than they can count. It’s hard to ignore things like that when you live together in a Harvard basement.

“William,” Walter says, and runs his hand across one of the blankets, then, in contrast, across the cool, smooth stone floor. “_William_. This is amazing. My hand is tingling.”

“Is it?”

“_Yes_. Ah…William?”

“What?”

“Why do you call me ‘Wally?’”

His friend (sometimes, he thinks, his only friend) thinks it over for a few minutes. It seems to last forever, but Walter has the blankets to distract him, and the smooth floor, and his own skin.

Finally, William says, “I don’t really know. It suits you sometimes.”

“I should be able to call _you_ something.”

William’s eyes narrow. He does not like nicknames when they are his.

“No.”

“Willy.”

“_No_.”

“What else is there? Willy, ‘Liam, uh…”

“Walter…”

“No, that’s my name. Will. And then _Bill_, and Billy…”

“_Ugh_.”

Walter laughs, and rolls until he is close enough to rest his head against William’s knee. This provides new texture, new sensation, and William unthinkingly winds his fingers through his younger friend’s curly hair, threading it across his skin, shuddering.

There are lots of things they talk about, and lots of things they do not. This is part of the latter.

“You don’t like ‘Billy,’” Walter murmurs, and looks up with those incredibly blue eyes, and William swallows. The MDMA is making him woozy and blurry, and _touchy_, which he normally isn’t, but it’s turning Walter into some kind of humanoid squid, and William discreetly attempts to check him for an outgrowth of tentacular appendages.

He doesn’t see any, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

“Billy,” Walter is still mumbling. “Billy, bailey, Bailey’s, bells…William Bell. Bellie. _Bellie_. It’s perfect!”

“What’s perfect?” William is too distracted by Walter’s hair, by the smooth heat of his neck, to quite realize that his friend is still talking about _names_, of all things. Walter pinches his leg, quick and light, and through the haze of ecstasy it feels like a kiss.

“_Bellie_, you moron. It’s the perfect nickname.”

“I’m not a moron,” William protests, and leans down to press his nose and mouth into Walter’s dark, springy curls. “You’re a moron.” He breathes in, and Walter smells like chemicals and fast food and musk. They have not showered yet today, and they have been sweating. William approves, and takes another breath.

“Stop _sniffing_ me,” Walter complains, and halfheartedly tries to bat William away, to no avail. “Jesus, you’re not a dog, Bellie.”

“Not a dog, not a moron,” William agrees, but does not abandon his attempt to memorize his partner through scent, does not back off, does not surrender. Walter retaliates by climbing into William’s lap and settling, warm and heavy, across his groin.

“You feel nice,” he pronounces, and then curls his long legs around William’s waist, and promptly passes out.

William doesn’t feel like moving. Moving would dislodge Walter from his lap, and would rob him of the scent and the sensation of him, and he’s always been better at outlasting his drugs than Walter.

Chemicals and sweat. The lab is dark around them, the blankets soft.

_We’re here to become legends, Bellie._

They are two thirty-something guys high on amphetamines in a dark basement.

Life cannot get any better.


End file.
